Any ideas?

m... this is something Zotero is supposedly supporting so we are not talking about a future feature rather on an existing one which doesn't work (for me at least).

I am using the most current one but the problem was there before I updated it a few days ago. It actually always fails to retrieve the journal and incorrectly assigns a author: Anatomical variations in the origin of the human ophthalmic artery with special reference to the cavernous sinus and surrounding meninges.
Matsumura Y, Nagashima M.
In this article when dragging the PDF to Z and trying the retrieve the metadata, the author I got was "Organs C.T." without the journal and pages but it did get the volume and issue.
In the mean time a window keeps appearing on the top of my screen asking me to enter a URL.
Thanks for your help and look forward to your suggestions.

Iddo, you need to install the PDF indexer for this feature to work. Go to "Search" in the Zotero preferences and click the "Check for installer" button. This should enable the option for you.

Interesting - why is this not installed as a default? I would have never guessed I need to do that.

It uses platform-dependent binaries that are distributed under a different license.

yup - it works!

So apperntly many PDFsfrom Jstor don't have matadata - what a shame :(
So basically what you are saying is that most PDF I will try to import this way will not have metadata? is there any conceivable way around it apart of course from typing all the data myself which is something I don't really want to do for hundreds of PDF files I already have?

true - I just thought that JSTOR from all places will be more organized on this point - apparently no - so I guess I can't expect more from smaller places.

Just a thought - why not use OCR application and build an algorithm that can try and extract the title, author, year of publication etc. from the front page of a PDF?
It won't be 100% (probably not even 70%) but it might be better than typing everything by hand.

sounds interesting.
You talk about "a large pool of data" - is this something you are currently activly looking into or are we talking about a distant future?

O.K. thanks :)

Engin,
One of the options that I would like to see is the ability top pick your repository. I agree that Pubmed is great and actually have been happy in all of my records taken directly from it. How do you save your PDF's? I have been saving them all in YEP with tags. This allows me to pull up all PDF's related to a subject and view in one glance. Although having PDF's associated with a citation in Z is functional, it does not have the visual feature of YEP and ends up duplicating the file on your drive.

Rashid

rmjanjua,

I do not save my PDFs any specific way any more, now that I'm using zotero. But I see your point.

Simon,

It does make me wonder, however, how other software manages accuracy in metadata retreival (I am specifically thinking of "Papers" which is available only on Macs). I guess their algorihthm is different, and if so, what are the chances of improving the current zotero algorithm?

PubMed stores only abstracts, not full-text, and thus would probably not work too well.

Would it be feasible to first use Google Scholar to identify PDF papers by using random texts snippets, and when that gives a positive hit, to send the Google Scholar metadata of the identified paper to Pubmed (e.g. author names, titles, DOI's)?

So this new feature only works on the Zotero 1.5 sync preview?

That is correct. It's a new feature that will be in 1.5.

I haven't had any success at all with this feature. WinXP, Zotero 1.5b1, and yes, the two necessary plug-ins are installed. I drag the pdf into the center pane, making sure that it's an entry by itself (not attached to an entry). Right click, the context menu entry for Retrieve PDF Metadata is there. The info window (with progress bar) opens, wheel spins, then "No matching references found". Every time. Every PDF, including the one suggested above by Tjownes on Nov 4 2008. If I go to google scholar by hand, the article(s) are found easily, the zotero icon appears in the address bar, I click on it, and an entry is created and its fields properly populated.

Any hints?

Evidently ... I have three zotero installations, and it works fine on two of them. When I get a chance I'll try to uninstall/reinstall the plug-ins and, if necessary, zotero. Unless you have a better suggestion.

Thanks,
Gary

Uninstall/reinstall of zotero did not solve metadata problem...

bauct: You're getting a permission denied error, which generally indicates an extension or application conflict. See Step 5 on the troubleshooting translator issues page, and start a new thread if you're still having trouble.

I just switched to Zotero from EndNote for the specific purpose of being able to retrieve PDF metadata, but this feature doesn't seem to work. I have the same problem as others on this forum where the Progress window comes up, it says "Retrieving Metadata" and just spins its wheel without getting anything. I have tried a number of PDFs from a variety of sources and tried the PDF that Tjowens linked, and that one doesn't work either.

I am on Windows XP, running a fresh clean copy of Firefox 3.0.1 with no other extensions except the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant that came installed. I am using Zotero 2.0b3 with the pdftotext 3.02 installed. The PDFs are definitely getting indexed - they are searchable and I can see the number of PDFs and words accumulating in the Search tab of the preferences window. But no metadata. Would love help on this, since again this is the main reason I switched to Zotero.

Got it. Thanks! I poked my head into Trac and saw the modification to trunk on its way. https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/4498 I hope this works. I'll look forward to the new build.

what OS are you running?
You can also get a pdf to your library by
a) opening it in your browser with a plugin and clicking the "Create new item from page" button and
b) using the "store copy of file" function.

I believe the metadata comes from google scholar, that's not always great, but usually a good start.
The adobe FF plugin for linux allows you to highlight and copy text, too. Essentially the same function as the built in pdf reader in Mendeley.

Drag&drop is broken in linux.

no, it's a FF on linux issue - word from Dan is it might be fixed for FF 3.6